by i was excited to play Triangle Strategy because I had heard good things about him. I enjoy the occasional tactical strategy game and Square Enix generally knows what it’s doing here. As for the overall gameplay, they did a very good job. I don’t know if there are really innovative or revolutionary aspects to the tactical battle system, but it works well and is easy to navigate. I also appreciate the different difficulties. The HD-2D art style is a very subjective part of the game. Some will enjoy it and some will not. I go back and forth about whether I like it or not.
In Triangle Strategy, one of the strengths is the story. It’s a well-crafted one with nice twists and turns throughout. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I really enjoyed it. Also, there are multiple endings that encourage you to replay the game multiple times. Unfortunately, there is a big drawback. In my opinion, the voice acting really depresses Triangle Strategy. I really enjoy the vocals and some of them give decent performances, but there are some performances that just feel dry and take me out of the moment. For example, his advisor Benedict seems to always use the same intonation patterns and tones when speaking. There never seems to be any variation in his voice to suit the mood. It doesn’t matter if he’s surprised, angry, happy, or just giving advice, each line sounds extremely similar. This is just one example of the bad performances.
These poor performances in voice acting are highlighted by the large number of scenes in Triangle Strategy. Basically, the game feels like a very long movie that occasionally has you engage in battle or gives you a few minutes to wander around a city. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, it creates a lot more of a visual novel feel than I was expecting for sure, but with lackluster sounding vocal performances, it really does feel like a drawback.
While many have played Triangle Strategy on Nintendo Switch, this review is about the PC version. I will say that on my machine (Ryzen 5 3600, RTX 2060, 16GB RAM), the game runs great. Of course, you don’t need a powerful machine, which makes it very affordable and always a plus (I’ll include a screenshot of the system requirements below). I personally wasn’t a fan of the keyboard connections that come with the game, but you can change them or, like me, just plug in a controller to use it. There are plenty of options for you to play and if you have a Steam Deck it’s verified and I can definitely see the appeal of playing it on the go. Many of the story chapters are fairly short, which means that if you only have 15-20 minutes, that should give you plenty of time to jump right in, do a chapter, and then bounce back to what you were doing. From this perspective, I’d actually say the Switch version might be better unless you said Steam Deck or use Steam Link on a mobile device.
